


The Triumvirate Heart

by michi_thekiller



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-01
Updated: 2014-01-01
Packaged: 2018-01-07 01:52:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1114123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/michi_thekiller/pseuds/michi_thekiller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Sherlock's death, John finds unexpected comfort in the form of someone who also knew Sherlock intimately. </p><p>But what happens when Sherlock comes back?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Triumvirate Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Sherlock Minibang!! Special thanks to [youlightthesky](http://archiveofourown.org/users/You_Light_The_Sky/) my darling, for all her sweet encouragement, and a million thanks to [ prettyarbitrary](http://archiveofourown.org/users/PrettyArbitrary/pseuds/PrettyArbitrary) for the beta but mainly for the hand-holding and listening to me sob. *soob soob*
> 
> Headcanon Victor Trevor is [Wang Lee Hom.](http://traumachu.tumblr.com/tagged/victor-trevor/chrono)

 

They didn't meet at the funeral, although they had both been there. Then again, John does not remember much about the funeral. It was a possibility that he had met Victor then, that Victor had been amongst the throngs of strangers who had taken John's hand in theirs and given their condolences, squeezing his hand just so. “I’m sorry for your loss,” they’d said, pitched in different voices, doled out in different levels of sincerity; variations on a theme. They came in clusters, in twos and threes; they came alone, looking around as if unsure where to go. They had been past clients and gawkers and press. There had been so many unknown faces that John did not even recognise the ones that he did know.

All John remembers about that day is that the sky had been grey. It had all passed over him in a grey haze, and then it was over before he knew it.

 

* * *

 

How they meet is a few weeks later, on the grassy green path up to Sherlock’s grave. John sees the long black coat first, and the dark hair, and his heart wrings itself out in his chest, and his hand clenches around the bouquet so hard that the stems of the carnations and lilies bleed sticky green juice.

He’s unable to discern, then, the pounding of footsteps thudding on grass from the pounding of his heart, whether the flush on his cheeks is from rushing blood or the chapping wind. And then he stops, and his heart stops, and the world stops, and realises how utterly _stupid_ he is.

It’s all wrong. He’s not as tall as Sherlock, only almost. His ink-black hair is silky and straight.

“Oh,” says John, panting out the sound. His chest hurts and it’s nothing, it’s just the chill of the wind burning in his lungs.

“I wasn’t expecting anyone else,” says the impeccably-dressed stranger. The coat is different, too, close-up. John notices him then. Close-up, he is a man worth noticing. A young Chinese man in his mid-30s; with dark, dark eyes and high cheekbones and warm golden skin. He’s striking in a fitted black suit.

He has come bearing roses.

“Me neither,” John says.

They look at each other awkwardly, both of them dressed up and holding bouquets, as if they were two teenagers who have shown up on the same girl’s doorstep, to pick up the same date.

“I knew him,” says the stranger, by way of explanation. His dark eyes are tired, with shadows smudged underneath from lack of sleep. He gestures at the grave with his bouquet. “Sherlock. We used to be...close.”

“Right,” said John. “Same here, I guess.” He tries not to stare, but Sherlock had said that he didn’t have any friends. And here they are, two strangers, come to his grave bearing flowers, in every breath mourning him.

"Victor Trevor," he says, gripping John’s hand in a firm clasp. He has a warm, decent handshake, the kind that’s meant to be a sign of good character. His accent is posh, totally public school; John can see it so easily - Victor and Sherlock cut from the same cloth.

John couldn’t tell you your profession by your shoes or whether your wife was unfaithful by the cut of your suit, but he can tell the tension in Victor’s shoulders and the tightness in his eyes. He can see the sleepless nights and the meaningless, endless days. Perhaps it is that grief calls to grief; it is that one void recognises another, like dark magnetite in the earth attracting iron.

"John…" John begins.

"Watson, I know," Victor says, and manages a small smile. "Big fan of your blog."

“He never mentioned you,” John says. He regrets it the instant that the words flit out. “I mean--”

“Of course he didn’t. That’s so like him,” Victor shakes his head. He’s still smiling.

The plastic of the bouquet rustles in John’s hand, his palm sticky with the bare and bleeding stems. He sucks in a deep breath. They are both quiet then, looking down at the name etched in smooth black marble. The leaves whisper all around them as the wind twists its way through the cemetery trees.

“Hey,” John says, and clears his throat, “this might sound weird but...do you want to grab a coffee or something?”

“Oh,” says Victor. “He never mentioned you were a mind-reader.” He smiles again, and John envies how easily that expression comes to him.

They place their flowers down on the grave, side by side.

 

* * *

 

“Sherlock was someone different when I first met him,” Victor says.

“Well, I imagine he was different back then,” John admits.

“No,” says Victor, “I mean, literally. He told me his name was Hunter Van Savage.” He blows on his cappucino to cool it. “So it’s our first year of uni, and I’m at this big party and this bloke comes up to me in this leather jacket with these Ray-ban sunglasses and stone-washed jeans that were so tight I thought he was going to sound like a soprano.”

“Oh my god,” says John. He has to put down his coffee to keep from spilling it all over himself. “You can’t be serious.”

“Wait,” says Victor, grinning. “It gets better. He comes up to me and he goes, ‘Yo man, can I like, bum a cigarette?’” Victor tosses his hair as if he’s flicking dark curls out of his eyes.

John laughs. He’s forgotten how good it feels. “Oh god.”

“I know!” Victor laughs. “For a whole week that dickhead had me believing he was an American student from L.A., right up until I heard him talk to the professor after our Biology class.”

“From L.A.? Seriously?”

“Oh, you should have heard him. He was a hundred percent young Hollywood. You know I always said he should have concentrated in Theatre. Impersonating people was his favourite thing.” Victor pauses and corrects himself, “Well, you know, after being right.”

“Yeah? And what did he say?” John asks, leaning in.

“He called me an idiot,” Victor says. “For about half an hour. 45 minutes. I’m not sure. I zoned out somewhere after the insulting inferences to inbreeding on my father’s side.”

“You know, sometimes I’d just leave when he went on one of his rants,” John smiles.

“Always a good option,” Victor agrees.

He continues, “He was so good at impressions. To this day my sister still calls me after she talks to our father to make sure she was really having a conversation with Dad and not Sherlock pretending to be Dad. And then I have to answer three test questions before she can be sure she’s speaking to me.”

His smile wilts at the edges. “Well, I guess that’s one thing she doesn’t have to worry about any more…”

“Okay,” John says, “Now I have to tell you the story about about the clown suit.”

 

* * *

 

“I need to hear all about your cases, all of them,” Victor says. He’s leaning in over his empty cup of coffee, dark eyes fixed on John’s face.

“That’ll take all night,” John says, already thinking about the most exciting bits of the one with the six Thatchers. The sound of his own voice surprises him after having been silent for so long; it sounds like it belongs to someone else almost, someone who he had been, once, but no longer recognises.

It’s not bad. Victor is so easy to talk to.

“I don’t have anywhere better to be,” Victor shrugs. “Is it true that you moved in with him the day after you met him?”

“I know, it sounds mad,” says John. “In fact, I’m still certain I’m certifiable.”

“Well,” says Victor, “You _are_ the doctor, here.”

“I don’t know what compelled me. He was arrogant and imperious and --”

“A dickhead,” Victor supplies helpfully.

“But also oddly charming,” says John. “Kind of.”

“A kind of charming dickhead,” Victor corrects.

“Yes,” John laughs. “Exactly that.”

“Look,” says Victor. “You don’t need to explain the whole phenomenon to me. We were like that. I mean, he and I - we just latched on to each other right away.”

“You know,” John says, “I’m surprised that Sherlock never told me about you.”

Victor shakes his head. “I’m shocked that he never told me about you. I mean, we didn’t talk much, anymore, and it wasn’t as if I expected an official announcement, but a text would have been nice.”

“But you still kept in touch,” John insists. He’s not sure who he’s more righteously angry for - himself or Victor - that Sherlock hadn’t seen fit to mention either of them to each other. It really doesn’t matter anymore, but anger is easier than sorrow.

“Oh, you know him,” Victor says, waving his hand dismissively. “Always saying horrible things. ‘I don’t have friends,’ like, really, who are you trying to kid?”

John smiles wryly. “I suppose that’s true. He was probably afraid we’d have too much to talk about, all his horrible bits and all.”

“And then he was probably afraid we’d run off together once we came to our senses,” Victor laughs.

John laughs as well. The aching eases up in his chest.

“The barista is giving us a nasty look,” Victor whispers conspiratorially. “Again.”

“I think he’s trying to decide whether or not we’ll put up a fight if he chucks us out on the street for sitting for four hours nursing £3 coffees.”

“Are you doing anything for dinner?” Victor asks. “There’s a Thai restaurant around here that I’ve been meaning to try.”

“Well,” John considers, “I do like Thai.”

 

* * *

 

Dinner lasts over three hours, their food mostly growing cold as they try to fit eating in between the talking. At differing points they each come close to needing the Heimlich (and Victor does know how to perform it) as they choke on curry puffs and rad na over stories of John and Sherlock dressed up as ninjas, and the time that Sherlock burned all his hair off in chemistry lab, and remedied this with wigs until his hair grew back.

“You know,” Victor says, when John’s regained his breath, “He looked surprisingly good ginger. But the blond wasn’t bad either.”

“Bastard,” John says, shaking his head.

“Vain bastard,” Victor corrects. “Held on to those wigs for months afterwards after I told him I thought he made a fetching blond. Used it again when we went to Dr. Rao’s Symposium and told everyone he was a visiting Professor by the name of Sylvester Hennypen.”

“Blond,” John says. “Wait, with his dark eyebrows?”

“Of course,” Victor replies. “I called it the Russian heiress look.” He grins.

At the end of the night, Victor slips him his number on a napkin. “I had a good time, John. That’s rare for me, especially...well, you know. These days. Let’s do this again sometime.”

“Just text me,” John says, inputting his number into Victor’s phone. Victor has an iPhone, and John is inordinately thankful because he knows how to work those. It wouldn’t do to look completely technologically inept in front of his new friend.

 

* * *

 

Harry is waiting up for him when John lets himself in with the spare key she has given him. “Late night for you,” she remarks as she takes his jacket. “At least you don’t smell like booze.”

“Neither do you.”

“Yes, well,” Harry says, “We can’t _both_ be messes.” She tosses his jacket onto the side of the sofa. “So, what were you up to?”

“I met someone.”

“All right,” says Harry. “Or who, then?”

John adds hastily, “Oh no, not like that. He’s an old friend of Sherlock’s. We had a lot to talk about.”

“Oh,” says Harry. She bites her lip, and John hears the conversation from yesterday morning in the way she lowers her lashes. _We never talk anymore. You can’t just bottle it all up, John, it’s not good for you._ And his rejoinder: _If I could talk about it, I would. I can’t even talk to my therapist, for Christ’s sake._

“Harry…”

“I wouldn’t get it. I know,” she shrugs. “Look, I’m not going to pretend I am.” She peers into his face. “I think I stopped getting you a long time ago, little brother. Well, ever since you up and moved in with a mad detective to play Ginger to his Fred.”

“I’m not...I wasn’t…” John sighs. It’s too late to debate this. He just wants to go to bed.

Harry hugs him suddenly, tight and fierce in a way that she hasn’t since he was eleven years old and afraid of the dark.

“Are you sure you haven’t been drinking?” John asks.

“Shut up, you sod. I’m being comforting,” Harry says, squeezing him hard.

“I’m comforted,” John says. The funny thing is that it’s not untrue.

“I’m happy you found someone to talk to,” Harry says.

“Yeah,” says John. “Me too.”

Later that night, sleep comes to him much easier, the way it does to those who know that tomorrow will be okay.

 

* * *

 

“He was always naked,” Victor says, cutting his manicotti with the side of his fork. “You’d be lucky if you got him to put on a sheet.”

“Yes!” John laughs. “That’s so true. I mean, he just slept naked --”

“Right, but then he’d wander out and _sit_ there, right out in the bloody sitting room, never mind that anyone could walk in at any time!” Victor finishes. “It’s like, look, mate, I didn’t sign up to be part of this one-person nudist colony.”

“He didn’t even need to be in the flat,” John says. “You read the one where we were in Buckingham Palace…?”

“Oh my god,” says Victor. “Yes, that story! Tell me _everything._ ”

John does. Well, as much as he can disclose that’s not classified. He starts with the helicopter ride, and then Buckingham Palace, and then talks a bit about Irene Adler, swallows down the burn in his throat with wine, wishes he had something a bit stronger.

“Professional dominatrix,” Victor says, and shakes his head. “And here I am, a barrister. My parents never told me there were more career paths out there than doctor or lawyer. Clearly, I’ve wasted my life. ”

“Well,” John says encouragingly, “It’s not too late. You’re still plenty young enough for a career change. How’s your flogging arm?”

“Not to brag or anything,” Victor shrugs, coolly casual, “But I did play cricket in uni.”

“Ah,” says John, a rugby man himself, “Now all that’s left is the corset and you’re well on your way.”

Victor laughs, and John watches him laugh, and he feels something warm stir in his chest and John thinks, maybe this could be all right.

* * *

 

Dreams of falling usually signify insecurity, instability, and anxiety. According to an old wives’ tale, if a person does not wake up before he hits the ground, then he will die in real life. John knows, of course, that this is patently untrue. A person can dream of hitting the ground as many as 7-10 times a night. He may wake up trembling and sweating, he may wake up panicked and distraught, but he will wake up all the same.

Ella says that John is getting better.

Freudian theory states that dreams of falling indicate that a person is contemplating giving in to sexual urge or impulse, but Freud has always been ridiculous and full of shit anyway.

 

* * *

 

“Another round!” Victor declares, slamming his fist down at the bar. “This one’s on me.”

“Wait, no…” John starts, “I think it’s my buy to turn. I mean.” He squints at his empty glass. There was something not right about the last sentence but he’s not quite sure what, and his glass is not giving him any answers at all.

Victor orders three drinks from the bartender. John suddenly realises that one of them is far more drunk than he originally thought: Victor for forgetting how to count, or himself for seeing double.

“It’s for Sherlock,” Victor says, grabbing the third drink. They sit with an empty barstool between them.

“Okay, remember that bet we had to see who would crack first?” John rubs his eyes with the heel of one hand. “I think you need to pay up.”

“No, no, no,” Victor insists. “It’s all right. I owe him a drink. Serious word of advice: never owe a Holmes anything.”

He takes the lowball glass of Remy Martin and pours it out, fine cognac splashing onto an already-sticky pub floor.

“Pouring one out for my fallen Holmies,” he says, with complete and utter solemnity. John laughs so hard at the absurdity of it all that he falls off his stool. Victor laughs so hard at John falling off that he falls off about ten seconds later.

They’re still laughing when they’re escorted out of the pub by the bouncer, so intoxicated that they can barely walk. They cling to each other in the dirty street, each one holding the other up, lamplight shining on the tears that streak their faces.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes John dreams of a night where he could run forever. The London sky is bright with stars, and the unknown planets dance in enigmatic revolutions. He grips someone’s hand in his, their fingers tightly entwined.

Sometimes there’s a joy in his heart, sometimes there’s an awful dread. The sound of footsteps thunders up his body, pounding cobblestone and pavement. Leaping across rooftops is like the best dreams of flying.

Sometimes he thinks they are running from some dark pursuer, sometimes he thinks they are running towards some bright horizon. All he knows is that he can’t stop running. If he does, he might look down, he might find that his hand is empty, and that he has been holding on to nothing at all.

 

* * *

 

_John, can you come by on Tuesday? Sorry to bother you dear, I just need your help moving all these boxes, bad hip you know._

“And then he goes, ‘That’s not _my_ burrito!’” Victor finishes, chuckling. “‘You can’t prove a thing!’”

“Right,” John says, pushing the power button on his phone to turn the screen off. “Yeah, he could be like that.”

“Is everything all right?” Victor asks.

“Yeah, of course,” John says. He puts the phone face-down on the table.

“Oh, come on, I know I’m no Sherlock, but give me a little credit here,” Victor says. “Who was the text from? Bad news from your sister or…?”

John sighs. “No, nothing like that. It was Mrs. Hudson. Our landlady. She’s asking me to drop by our flat to help her move some things. I know I need to do to it, but...”

“Ah,” says Victor. “You haven’t been back since…”

Home: the black door with the gleaming bronze letters, the wallpaper with the bullet holes, John’s chair, _his_ chair, the stacks of medical texts and loose papers, old witness reports half-written, casual messages left in sticky notes gently curling at the edges, kitchen sink a mess, bath tub with questionable stains, the violin silent in the corner.

John exhales slowly. “No.”

“Let’s go,” Victor says, suddenly.

“What?”

“I mean, I’ll go with you, if you want,” Victor corrects himself. “I’ve actually been meaning to ask you if I could see it.” He cocks his head. “If that’s all right.”

John wants to say no. Say the same thing that he’s been telling Mrs. Hudson for the past few weeks, that he’s just very busy and doesn’t know when he’ll find the time. He could tell the truth and say that he just can’t. Victor would understand.

He looks at Victor’s open, expectant face. “Yeah. Okay.”

John knocks back the rest of his drink. “If you really want to, then okay.”

 

* * *

 

Mrs. Hudson greets him with a tight hug and an exuberant kiss on the cheek. John hugs her back, noticing for the first time how small her waist is; has she lost weight? Although her grip on him is iron-strong.

“And who’s this young man?” she asks, eyeing John as if he were a young widow swanning about with the poolboy on her arm, and her husband not two months in the ground.

John flushes so bright he can feel the heat in his throat. “Um...actually, this is Victor. He’s an old friend of Sherlock’s.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” Victor says, genuine and warm. “Sherlock and I went to school together.” He shakes her hand and does not embarrass himself by pretending to be French or calling her a radiant beauty or any of those sleazy clichés that people somehow think is charming for older women, but is actually uncomfortable and mildly insulting for all involved.

“Oh,” Mrs. Hudson says, the suspicion melting away. She wraps Victor up in a hug as well. “Why didn’t you say so? Any friend of Sherlock’s is a good boy.”

She leaves them with the promise of tea later in the afternoon if they’ve both been good (although John is not sure what constitutes ‘bad’ behaviour, as shooting at the wall had merely garnered a very severe scolding).

Coming back to 221B is like that: a waiting embrace, the comfort of home. Similarly, it is also like a punch in the gut, a hand the grips his intestines, twists them around a fist and squeezes.

Victor finds the remnants of an experiment on the kitchen table: a rack of test tubes growing a variety of green and orange substances. The yellow post-it note on it declaring “EXPERIMENT. DO NOT DISTURB” (in Sherlock’s most forceful writing ) has been disturbed. The microscope is still set up, although whatever was on the slide has grown fuzzy, forestation sprouting out beyond the borders of the glass slip.

“So he still does these funny experiments,” Victor says, poking at an old agar plate streaked with neon.

“Yeah,” John says, fighting the urge to put everything back in its place, so that Sherlock won’t throw a tantrum when he comes home. The note says, ‘Do not disturb,’ surely Mrs. Hudson should have known to let it alone, she knows how he can get.

He shouldn’t have come back here. It’s too soon. Sherlock haunts the flat; if he turns, he can see him sitting in his chair. If he listens he can hear the strains of violin playing over the noise of city traffic. Any moment now he’s going to hear the urgent pounding of steps running up the stairs, the banging of a door flung open on its hinges, an imperious voice exclaiming, “ _John! Case!_ ”

He can’t breathe. The ever-present dull ache in his chest grows and intensifies, pushes out against his ribs. Pinpricks of heat form behind his eyes, and his vision blurs, and the room is spinning, and he _misses_ him, oh god he misses him, misses him so much that he’s sick with it, he has eaten his grief and he is nauseous with it and the noise in his ears is like the roar of gunfire and the feeling in his chest is crushing his lungs and he can’t fucking breathe --

“John,” Victor says, hand on his elbow. “John.” There are hands on his arms. “Do you need some air?”

“No. I’m fine. Yeah. I don’t know.” John shakes his head. He coaches his own breath, the way he would for his patients with anxiety disorders. Inhale. Count to ten. Hold it. Hold it. Slow exhale.

He lets Victor guide him down to a chair - by some happy accident, it just so happens to be his chair. Or perhaps Victor is that observant, he doesn’t know.

What he does know is that some indiscernible amount of time later (and some indiscernible racket later), Victor is placing a hot cup of tea in his hands. John takes a sip. It is the worst cup of tea he has ever had: too bitter, too milky, and far, far too sweet, all at the same time.

“I like tea,” Victor says. “I drink a lot of it. One could even call me a tea expert.” His expression is sheepish. “Of course, my expertise does not include the making of, as I have never had to do that myself.”

“Must be nice to be rich,” John says. The milky liquid ripples. Slight rattle of the spoon on the plate. John holds his left hand still with his right and sets the cup of tea down.

“Not that rich,” Victor shrugs. “Mostly spoiled.”

John takes another sip and grimaces. “It’s perfect,” he says.

“It tastes like sweet piss.”

“Well, yes, of course,” John says. “But thank you.”

Victor pokes around the flat while John sips at his awful tea and watches him, rediscovering Sherlock through another’s eyes. Victor laughs at the bullets in the wall, (“You need to be more careful with your firearms, John. Although I was always the better shot of the two of us.”), examines the letters (“Oh! He still does the knife thing.”), tsk’s at the mutilated game of Cluedo (“Never play with him. A sore loser and a cheater if he thought he could get away with it. I never let him get away with it.”), and picks up the skull (“Why, hello, Billy.”).

“I bet he was a great detective,” Victor says. He has found the deerstalker and he is examining it, turning it front and back.

“The best.”

“I never would have predicted that for him. He was so brilliant it made my teeth hurt to think about it and he had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. He could have been anything and excelled at it. Actor, scientist, philosopher - you know.”

“I know,” says John, who very well does.

“We didn’t care then. It’s hard to care about the future when you’re 20 and off your face most days of the week. We just wanted to have a good time. Still, I knew him really well. I knew him better than anyone. But even then he was always a bit of a mystery. And then there’s all this,” he makes a grand gesture at the entire flat, at the various reminders from their cases, at the pile of newspaper clippings in a box, their stacks and stacks of research, “and I don’t know any of it, and it makes me think that I didn’t know anything at all.”

His voice cracks a bit on the word all. He clears his throat, once, twice, coughs. Presses a fist to his forehead.

“Do you want some real tea?” John asks, getting up.

“No, no, that’s quite all right. Sit down.”

“At least have some sweet piss,” John says, holding out his cup. “It’s still warm, even.”

Victor laughs and takes a sip, then makes a face. “Oh god, that’s absolute _shit_. You’re too polite for your own good.”

“I wasn’t that polite when I punched Scotland Yard’s Chief Superintendent.”

“Hang on, you did _what_?”

“Have a seat. Let me put the kettle on, and then I’ll tell you some things about what you don’t know.”

 

* * *

 

They’re meant to be tidying up, John knows, but all that seems to be happening is making more mess. Or rather, moving mess around, as he opens folders and shows Victor their crime scene photos and newspaper articles: “Junior Minister Suicide After Drink Binge;” “Journalist Slain in Impossible Murder” - acting as tour guide through his life with Sherlock.

The flat floods with warm red as the sun kisses the London skyline. It gets dark earlier and earlier these days.

They turn on all the lights. When John next looks at the clock it is suddenly 8 pm already; he puts in an order for takeaway from their - his - favourite Chinese restaurant just down the road.

Spreading ginger and scallions over soy sauce chicken and rice, Victor says, “We used to raid Professor Blackington’s office for his alcohol stash. He had his suspicions but he could never garner enough evidence to prove it was either of us. We were always each other’s alibi. In fact, Sherlock was the one who taught me how to pick a lock.”

“So you were a couple of juvenile delinquents,” John smiles.

“Hey! Only part of that phrase is true,” Victor says. He pauses meaningfully. “We were over 18, so legally we weren’t juvenile anymore.”

Victor’s Sherlock was like that: wild, reckless, self-destructive. “Stole Sebby Wilkes’ motorbike once for an all-night joyride. I think we may have dumping it in the river, but don’t worry: Wilkes was a grade-A twat if you ever saw one.”

John’s Sherlock faced down a madman with a gun in his hand, ruthless for a moment before he was caught off-guard by sentiment.

Both of them men the other never knew; between them, they split the difference.

“You know,” John says, picking a piece of beef out of his chow fun, “sometimes I don’t know why he did the things he did. Most of the time, actually.”

“Who knows why he did anything, really,” Victor says.

They find a box full of newspapers delivered but unread, pages bundled up and still crisp in their plastic wrap. John builds the fire while Victor hands him the papers, one by one. They watch as fire eats up the headlines: “Suicide of Fake Genius” consumed by flames.

 

* * *

 

Midnight approaches, sneakily and without warning.

“It’s no use heading back to our places for the night,” Victor says, quite reasonably. “Rather silly when there’s a perfectly good bed and sofa here.”

John nods, relieved. He hadn’t wanted to come back here, but now that he’s back, the thought of leaving seems just as abominable.

His room is exactly as he’s left it: jacket hanging on the closet door, trousers draped over a chair, bed made military-neat.

He sinks into the comfort of his own bed, weighted down by the heaviness of things that he doesn’t know. The sense of home envelopes him, and sleep takes over before long.

 

* * *

 

John wakes up, and is unsure that he has woken up at all. He’s back in his room, he’s back home, and it’s all so normal and right. It’s the day of the trial again, right before it all started. In a few minutes, Sherlock is going to come into his room, complaining loudly about having to wear a tie. He’s going to rummage through John’s closet, questioning (insulting) his sartorial choices, and refuse to be seen with him if he matches _that_ shirt with _that_ tie. He’s going to pick out John’s outfit and fling it onto the bed at him, bark at him to get up and dressed and John will know that mostly Sherlock is cranky because he wants breakfast and there will be the smell of burnt toast in the air and if he stays in bed, if he keeps his eyes closed, Sherlock will come storming in, any minute now…

The air smells like frying bacon.

It’s not the day of the trial, or any days before that, and John has to get up, eventually.

He finds Victor at the stove, looking unfairly decent for someone who has spent the night on a sofa. His trousers show a slight wrinkle to them but that is about it, his pale blue shirt open at his throat to the third button but tucked in, regardless. He also looks unfairly awake for this ungodly hour of--

“Is it really 11?” John asks. “How long was I asleep?”

“Almost ten hours, if you went to sleep right when you said you were going to bed,” Victor replies. He flips the bacon in the pan effortlessly. “You were tired. I didn’t want to wake you. How do you like your eggs?”

“Any way is fine.” John hasn’t slept that long in...forever, it seems. The last time was after a case, catching up on three days of lost sleep. A lifetime ago. “So you can’t make tea, but you can cook.”

“It’s all a ruse. I fool people into thinking I can cook by knowing how to make a few things beautifully, and most things not at all,” Victor says, cracking two eggs into a bowl. “Breakfast is a _very_ important skill to have. Hang-overs, morning afters, cures what ails you.”

“By the way,” Victor adds, “your fridge is disgusting.”

“You didn’t see it when it was filled with decaying human remains,” John replies.

Victor starts, then he laughs.

He serves them both bacon and eggs - scrambled, with cheese, sprinkled with some dried herb seasoning John vaguely remembered buying - garnished with parsley; side of stewed tomato and toast. “You _are_ good at breakfast,” John marvels.

“One of my few marketable skills,” Victor says, and winks.

John makes tea. They eat in companionable silence on the non-experiment side of the kitchen table.

“So...are you thinking of moving out, then?” Victor asks.

“I don’t know.” John frowns at his tomato, pushing the edge of his fork down into the soft surface. He watches the thin skin give away as orange-red juices ooze out. “I wasn’t...I didn’t really think about it.”

“I know.” At John’s questioning glance, Victor continues, “You haven’t been back here in nearly two months. In the time that I’ve known you, I’m guessing you have - 6...7 shirts on rotation? Either you really love those shirts, or you only packed an overnight bag. And you’re staying with your sister despite the fact that you two fight like cats and dogs.”

Of course. Victor _is_ observant. “That obvious, huh?”

Victor shrugs. “I was just wondering. I’m thinking of staying in London a bit longer than I originally planned, and you know my sister and my parents are driving me batty.”

John cuts his tomato into fourths. He looks up at Victor again, who meets his eyes and then quickly looks back down at his own plate. John thinks about how well he slept, how bearable it all is.

Sherlock wouldn’t mind.

“Well,” John says, after a moment, “The rent is paid up until the end of the month, at least.”

 

* * *

 

 _Ghost_ with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore is playing on the telly. “Oh, this cheesy old film,” John says, even though he rather likes it.

“I had my first kiss to this movie,” Victor says. “In the theatre, of course. I was so dumbfounded I could barely pay attention to the rest of the film.” He looks at John with mock-seriousness, arching one brow. “That pottery scene is no joke.”

They sit together and watch the whole thing. Sherlock would have gotten bored with the ridiculous premise and heckled the film from beginning to end.

“I used to believe in ghosts, when I was little,” John offers, when the credits roll. “Deathly afraid of them.”

“And now?” Victor asks.

John does not look at the empty chair across from them, nor at the violin in the corner.

“Now, not so much,” he admits.

“That’s okay,” Victor says. His voice is low and almost kind. “I used to believe in God.”

 

Sometimes they go out, but most nights they stay in. They’re comfortable at Baker Street.

 

* * *

 

At first Victor stays on the sofa, neither of them needing to talk about the way sleeping arrangements will go. But the week Victor intends to stay turns into two, and after that the days roll into each other, filled with trips to the various fancy cafes around London, and takeaway dinners, and excellent breakfasts, and easy conversation, stories about Sherlock, or what Sherlock might think, and horror movie marathons, and John is doing locum work again, and Victor has his firm send London cases his way, and there’s the dull ache that has nested in muscle caged by his ribs, and sometimes they laugh so hard their stomachs hurt, and one night John wakes at 2 in the morning from a nightmare to find Victor already up and making his horrible tea because he can’t sleep, and they’re forced to admit that kipping on sofas is not a long-term solution, particularly not for a man like Victor.

“I’ll be careful not to ruin anything,” Victor says as he sets his bag down in the far corner of Sherlock’s room.

John sits down on the corner of Sherlock’s bed and tugs at the comforter to straighten it out. He smoothes it out with his hand, and then straightens it again.

 

* * *

 

John is sitting cross-legged on Sherlock’s bed, cold beer in his lap, held in place by his legs. Victor is lolling about on the other side of the bed, long limbs half-dangling over the edge, and not particularly caring, three sheets to the wind already. He’s humming a tune to himself that’s very familiar, but John has trouble placing it.

“I yelled at him,” John confesses. “The last time I really saw him, I yelled at him.”

“He probably deserved it,” Victor replies, words half-muffled by the blanket. He resumes singing quietly.

“But what if...what if I had stayed? What if I had been there? Would it have turned out any different? I could have--”

“You’re going to kill yourself on ‘what if,’ mate,” Victor says. Under his breath he continues, “ _Cellophane flowers of yellow and green, towering over your head…_ ”

“But don’t you wonder? And what the bloody hell are you singing?” John finally snaps.

Victor picks himself up, propping himself up on one elbow to look at John. He sings: “Picture yourself in a boat on a river, with tangerine trees and marmalade skies.”

He has a nice voice; a golden tenor. “Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly…”

“Oh. That song.”

“....a boy with kaleidoscope eyes,” Victor finishes.

John blinks at him.

“Sherlock in the sky with diamonds,” Victor tells him, half sing-songing it. “Something stupid I made up in uni. It annoyed the shit out of him. We used to do a lot of drugs.”

“Of course you did,” says John, taking a large swill of his bitter.

“I mean it,” Victor says. “Work hard, play hard, right? Except Sherlock never worked all that hard. He would get other people to do it for him. I was never quite sure how, since nobody liked him all that much. Blackmail comes to mind.”

“Somehow, also unsurprising.”  
“Anyway, if we could smoke it, snort it, pop it, inject it - we tried it. And it was great fun, and as a result I don’t remember a large portion of my uni career, but I do remember that it was great fun.” He sighs and makes a reach for his beer on the nightstand. It’s just beyond arm length - he barely brushes it with his fingertips. He gives up. “It was all fun and games, in fact, until one day, Sherlock discovered heroin.”

“Oh,” John breathes.

“I tried it, but I didn’t get quite the same kick out of it as he did. Sherlock loved it. Absolutely fucking _loved_ it. In fact, I’m fairly sure he loved heroin more than he loved me. By quite a bit, too.”

Victor tugs restlessly at the duvet. “I tried to get him to give it up. You can imagine how well that went, getting Sherlock Holmes to do something he doesn’t want to.

“Anyway. I come home to our flat one day, and there he is, laid out in the middle of our sitting room floor, face-down and blue. Luckily I knew CPR. Respiratory arrest, not cardiac. Not yet. But if I had been five minutes later, or even one minute later, who knows how long he was down - bastard would have never gotten the chance to meet you and fuck up your life as well as mine.”

“So what did you do?”

“Called 999, got him to the hospital, of course. And they woke him up - a little naloxone always does the trick, as you know - and I stayed with him, and within an hour he was right as rain and complaining again, demanding to be discharged and terrorising the nurses. He refused to believe that he’d almost died. I told him to go to rehab. He sneered at me. So I left. Went straight home and packed my things.”

“That’s understandable,” John says quietly.

“He needed me, and I left. He had a problem and I was 21 and helpless and tired and terrified, so I up and abandoned him when he needed me most.”

“It wasn’t your fault.” He’s not sure if he should reach for Victor’s hand.

Victor shakes his head. “It wasn’t his fault. He was an addict. I mean, so was I. It was just by pure chance and sheer pigheaded stubbornness that I managed to walk away from my addiction. And I thought about it all the time, and every night I thought about his stupid cyanotic face, and I wondered if tonight would be the night that he’d OD for good, and I thought about what if, over and over and drove myself batty with it and eventually I just had to stop thinking. I found other ways to occupy my time.”

He laughs a little. “So you see, John, in terms of failing him...it could have easily been me. And then neither of us would be here right now.”

Victor sighs and rolls over until he’s very close, peering up into John’s face. “I suppose that’s why I’m glad he found you. Or you found each other. He deserved to be happy. I think….that’s all I wanted for him, in the end.”

He places his hand over John’s hand, and gives it a gentle squeeze. “I’m happy you could make him happy in all the ways I couldn’t.”

Wait. What? No.

Stop. Rewind.

"I’m not…We weren’t…" John stumbles over the words. "We weren’t a couple. No. I’m not…it wasn’t like that. No."

"Oh," Victor says. His eyes are wide.

"And you…"

"Um. We…we were. We were like that," Victor says, withdrawing his hand.

“You were….” John can’t wrap his mind around it.

“We were dating,” Victor says slowly.

“Okay, ‘dating’ or _dating_ dating?” John needs to know.

“I wasn’t aware there was a difference.”

“Was it the kind of dating where everybody thinks you’re on a date but you’re not actually, or was it the kind of dating where you intentionally go on dates?”

Victor clears his throat. “It was the kind of dating where we take each other’s clothes off and shag like bunnies in happy, hoppy springtime.”

"Oh," John says. His eyes are wide. He places his hand in his lap and kneads his own thigh.

“Right,” says Victor. “Well, I think it’s time to call it a night, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” John says, scrambling up to his feet. He is suddenly very sober. “I’m just going to...ah...go back to my bed and, um, sleep.”

“Righto,” Victor says.

“I’ll, ah, see you in the morning,” John says, and then winces at his own lameness.

“Yes. Um. See you around,” Victor replies, who is clearly not faring much better.

 

* * *

 

It isn’t that John is homophobic. He has no problems with The Gays. His sister, in fact, is gay. His best mate - apparently - was gay (or at the very least bisexual). His very good friend - apparently - is also gay (or at the very least bisexual). It’s fine. It’s all fine.

It’s just that John had never thought of Sherlock in that way. If anything, he’d always pictured Sherlock a bit asexual, without much interest in women or men. Well, there had been Irene Adler, but that hadn’t been much about sex, in the end. An infatuation for her brilliance, which perhaps might have amounted to the same thing, for Sherlock.

But now he does think about it. He doesn’t try to. In fact, he tries very hard _not_ to. But all the stories that Victor told him are coloured with it now - the time they broke into the university pool and went skinny dipping together takes on an entirely different context. (How “It’s not as fun as you think it’s going to be, but, you know, we managed,” was about more than just _swimming_ naked.) The sleepovers that were more than that, two of them entwined on a tiny twin bed; what a flatshare actually meant. Victor and Sherlock, laughing together. Hugging each other. Touching. Kissing. Fucking.

Tries not to think about it when he looks at Victor. Doesn’t watch his mouth when he talks, doesn’t imagine the shape of his mouth on Sherlock’s skin. He doesn’t look at his throat or consider what it might look like purpled with love bites. And when Victor comes out of the shower, water dripping off his dark hair and trickling down his neck and then lower than that, John definitely doesn’t think about Victor and Sherlock at the pool, their wet bodies rubbing against each other, tongues and mouths wet and slick with water and saliva.

Victor is very conventionally attractive. It hasn’t escaped John’s notice. Victor is a man worth noticing. You’d have to be blind to ignore that. The baristas flirt with him, bat their lashes, give him extra foam and whipped cream and coffee for free - female and male alike. Sherlock turned most women off as soon as he spoke and insulted them. Victor smiles and doesn’t have that problem.

John isn’t attracted to men, but there are certain men who sometimes make you wonder, a little. Make your eyes wander, a little. And if he can admit that, maybe now he can say that, Sherlock was very unconventionally attractive. And Sherlock was the kind of man who took up all your attention and left no room for anything else.

 

* * *

 

John dreams of falling. He wakes up before he hits the ground.

 

* * *

 

“So….your relationship…” John begins, clears his throat. “It was...fun?”

Victor cocks his head at him curiously, dark eyes glittering with amusement. He lets his lashes drop, hooded gaze for a moment, regarding John. John feels a hot sensation, tingling just underneath his collarbones. “Oh, yes,” Victor says, “Before it got bad, it was so, so _much_ fun.”

“Ah,” says John.

“And yours?” Victor prompts him.

“The best time of my life,” John replies, and is surprised at how easily the answer comes to him, and how true it is.

 

* * *

 

A documentary on cliff divers is running on BBC One, something that is far more amusing than it ought to be after half a bottle of scotch - Victor’s choice - shared between them. John finds himself comfortably leaned over, shoulder against Victor’s arm. Sometime during one of the commercial breaks, he looks up in the middle of an offhand comment about Pepsi versus Coke to find Victor watching him, eyes dark with an intent that tugs at something deep in his stomach. Unthinkingly, John licks his lips.

Later he will want to say that it was Victor who kissed him first, grabbing at him, pulling him forward, but John is the one who tilts his face for the proper angle, who presses forward for more of the urgency of Victor’s mouth against his, whose lips part, opening with a small groan, already anticipating. Kissing Victor is familiar and new all at once, like singing along to a song where he doesn’t know any words, only the melody. The words are in another language. But the music is universal, the heady sort of desire that comes with drink and long pent-up frustration, over two months of shared sorrows and tension between them. Victor’s chest is flat against his, his hands strong, his body heavy when he pins John to the couch. The alcohol makes it easy to accept this, to enjoy it, even, the intimacy of another person, the warmth of another body, someone who desires him. He opens his mouth for the kiss, for Victor’s tongue, hot and wet and sliding against his, sucks the taste of Glenfiddich from it. He groans and arches his whole body up, one hand clenching in Victor’s hair and another on his shoulder. If Victor were a bit taller they might still fit like this, perfectly like this, if Victor was a bit leaner he would still feel similar to this on top of him, and Victor’s mouth was the same mouth that had once kissed Sherlock…maybe not like this…

Victor breaks away, his hair mussed, cheeks flushed and lips reddened from kisses. His dark eyes shine in the light of the living room lamps. But he looks at John and he hesitates, although John can feel his erection pressing against him, something that thrills him and terrifies him all at once. Victor sucks in a breath and says, “Stop if you don’t really want this. ”

John doesn’t know what to say. His heart hardens in a lump in his throat; it is a heavy stone, in his throat. He swallows once, then again. He blinks, like someone stepping out from a very, very dark place where they had been trapped for a long time.

He doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything at all. Instead, he pulls Victor back down on top of him, the scotch numbing his fear, his trepidation, making his movements bold and smooth. He kisses him again, moans into his mouth when Victor slides his hand between them and rubs at John’s hardening cock. Kisses turn frantic, needy and rushed. John doesn’t know what to do but Victor guides the way, Victor guiding his hands, showing how how to touch, and the feel of another man’s cock in his hand for the first time is another one of those familiar yet alien things, like touching his own, but the angle is all wrong, and his palm becomes wet with another man’s precum and he’s still hard with Victor touching him, kissing him, kissing his mouth, his jaw, sucking a wet, harsh kiss upon his throat. Victor positions them, shows John how to spread his legs so that he can fit between them, John made pliant and warm by alcohol, gasping when Victor takes them both in hand and strokes them both, hips thrusting, the two of them rubbing against one another. John is caught off guard by how much he likes it, how good it feels and how much he wants it, just this, Victor nuzzling into his ear, breathing him in, his body rocking on top of John’s on the sofa, until his orgasm ambushes him and he spills all over Victor’s hand and his dick and Victor holds him tight and thrusts a few times more in the wet warmth until he comes between them as well, their semen mixing together.

Their panting breaths are loud enough to drown out the voice of the telly in the otherwise quiet flat. Tentatively, slowly, John lets his arms wrap around Victor’s back, his body still trembling. Victor slides one arm underneath him; gingerly, they hold one another.

They stay that way for a while.

 

* * *

 

John wakes up, shoulder aching and leg aching from having spent the night all twisted up on the sofa, and the other half of his body completely numb from having someone else’s body crushing him. His skin is sweaty, sticky and hot in all the places that they’re pressed together.

“Oof,” John says, tries to speak and spits out a mouthful of black hair. “Pfft.”

He shoves at Victor. “Oi, get up, you’re heavier than you look.” His mouth tastes like the floor of a public toilet in a bordello.

“Did you just call me fat?” Victor mumbles, face still buried in John’s neck. John can feel his voice rumble through both their chests, low and rough with early morning, thrumming with satisfaction. Morning-After voice. “Good morning to you too, starshine.”

Victor pushes himself up, carefully peeling them apart, and then makes a face as he looks down between them. “Well,” he says, “that’s disgusting.”

“Don’t even tell me,” John groans, easily deducing what Victor’s looking at. He flings his numb arm across his eyes to block out the light, although by some miracle he doesn’t have a hangover.

“And this is why breakfast is my specialty,” Victor says, getting up. “Morning afters.”

It’s frighteningly normal, the way they sit at the breakfast table together. John doesn’t feel like he’s any different. He doesn’t think his genes have recoded themselves in the time they were sleeping. He doesn’t have any urges to go clubbing or see a musical or pick up an interest in fashion. The world seems much the same, as well. Victor’s Belgian waffles still taste amazing, and his coffee still tastes like shit.

After breakfast, John watches Victor clean up the dishes, something Sherlock never used to do. He watches the lines of Victor’s back through his soft grey t-shirt, thinks about the way Victor clutched at him like a man drowning.

He stands behind Victor and places his hands on his waist, turning him around.

“John?”

John leans up for a kiss. He’s stopped by a hand on a chest, Victor keeping a careful distance between them.

“Look, you don’t have to do this ,” Victor says. His lips part slightly when he looks down at John. His hair is still a mess, spiking up funny in different directions. He looks oddly young in the morning light.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” John says, honestly.

“There’s two ways we can go from here. It’s not too late for it to just be a drunken hookup. A one-time kind of thing.”

“Oh,” John says, stepping back a little. “Is that what we’re calling it?”

“I’m just saying, you have an escape if you want to take it,” Victor says. “I won’t hold it against you.”

John frowns, trying to gauge just how insulted he should feel.

“Look, I like you,” Victor says. “I like living here with you. I don’t want...Christ, can’t believe I have to say this at my age - I don’t want to fuck everything up because I can’t keep my hormones under control.”

“I seem to recall there were two people involved last night,” John points out, irritable now. “I was well aware of what I was doing when I was doing it.”  
Victor looks at him with so much sorriness in his eyes that John wants to punch something. “You’ve never been with another man before. What makes you think you want something more from me?” He takes a step back, a deep breath. He folds his arms against his chest. His voice is softer, quiet and careful when he speaks again. “I’m...not him. I can’t be him for you.”

John feels like there’s a hand on his windpipe, choking all the air out of him. He feels like the air around him has been placed with clear viscous liquid. The feeling in his chest is the fluid filling up his lungs. He’s drowning.

“What do you want, John?” Victor asks him. There’s no judgment in his tone. It would be so much easier if there were.

“I want…” John pauses. “I want to go for a walk.”

 

* * *

 

The streets around Baker Street are busy, traffic flowing, people going about with their lives, a world that continues on and on. John sets out with no particular route or destination in mind.

When Sherlock used to peeve him he went for walks to keep from strangling his flatmate. When Afghanistan loomed close, gunfire and heat and nitrile gloves smeared with blood, he grounded himself in the chaos of London.

And if he doesn’t concentrate, if he doesn’t think, he can fall into step with someone whose strides are longer than his, each of them compensating for the other, can remember what it was like to occasionally bump shoulders, can hear the various deductions and horrible insinuations about passersby.

John does not think of anything at all.

He finds himself in Queen Mary’s Gardens, walking the path of the Inner Circle again and again; going nowhere, but with the illusion of travel.

 

* * *

 

John ends up back at Baker Street. Homing instinct: the ability to find one’s way back to a particular fixed point even after travelling long distances over unfamiliar territory. If he died tomorrow he wonders where his ghost would go - only he doesn’t believe in any of that nonsense.

Victor is sitting at the kitchen table, playing some music on his laptop while he looks over legal documents.

“How was your walk?” Victor asks him.

 

John looks at him, freshly-showered, sitting there in his grey shirt and comfortable pyjama bottoms, stylish hair ruffled, doing his work next to Sherlock’s disturbed experiment. In the background, Cat Stevens sings about the first cut being the deepest.

John crosses the floor to take Victor’s face in both his hands, and he kisses him. Victor opens his mouth to speak, and John kisses him again to shut him up, kisses him silent. He kisses him until Victor is kissing him back, is pulling him down onto his lap, mouths meeting and parting until they are both quietly out of breath.

 

* * *

 

He won’t call it love. It’s not that. John is no fool.

But kissing Victor is good, so good - still good in all his sobriety, and they stay up late together one night heckling a stupid romantic comedy and Victor likes all the restaurants John shows him and Victor says ridiculous things to make him laugh and Victor understands about Sherlock and for the first time in what feels like forever John wants something again and Victor understands him. All in all, that’s more than John has had with his last four or so girlfriends, so that’s good.

It’s good enough.

 

* * *

 

But what if?

What if what if what if.

whatifwhatifwhatif

 

* * *

 

Sherlock’s room still smells of him. Since Victor has moved in his sheets smell of the both of them, Sherlock and Victor both intertwined. John’s heart flutters a rapid tattoo in his chest, his breath fast and his whole body riding high on some strange crest of adrenaline, spiked with potent lust. But Victor is a gentle, careful lover, patient, slow - asking, “Is this all right?” with each touch, expertly stroking his cock in a way that John’s never experienced before, whispering, “Relax”, hushing, “Say stop if you need to,” with his fingers slick with lube sliding inside of John where he’s never had anything before, meticulously stretching him open, rubbing some place inside John that he knows, clinically, is his prostate but Jesus Christ how it shocks him, makes his body jerk and his dick twitch, and Victor is touching him and teasing him and stretching him until John is shaking and moaning for it, mouth open and gasping in Sherlock’s sheets.

When Victor finally pushes inside of him, it’s a heavy,full feeling that makes him keen and gasp, Victor’s hand on his cock stroking him, coaxing him through it, telling him to push out, relax, you can do it and then John’s mind is so overloaded with sensation - especially when Victor begins to rock and rub inside of him - his mind, it goes completely blank. Being filled like this wipes it clean, he’s too overwhelmed for thought or speech, nothing left except for the connection of their bodies together and Victor rubbing gently in and out of him and the thump of blood in his hard dick between them. He is painfully, wonderfully, still aware of who it is inside of him, fucking him in Sherlock’s bed, and Victor squeezes his hand as he pins it to the mattress, and whispers in his ear, “John, John, John, “ as he rocks into him, and then thrusts into him, the headboard knocking rhythmically against the wall. Victor fucks him slowly, careful for his first time and all John can feel is the heat of their bodies and pleasure that sparks bright inside of him, and he wants it to drag on forever, nothing to think about, nothing left but this feeling, ache and fullness and pleasure and pain all twisted together.

When they fall asleep that night, for the first time in a long time, John doesn’t feel the pain anymore. He doesn’t feel anything at all.

He curls up to Victor, cuddled up warm to him, each of them embracing the other in Sherlock’s bed.


End file.
